Hi like your post. Im from Newcastle in Northumbria. I prefer the local comunity teams to professional rugby. I go to falcons home games and some Edinbougth games and prefer the pro14 too premiship. I don't know if it would be a good idea to join the leagues. Welsh and Scottish teams playing the falcons would be of more interest than the southern teams in the premiship.

The main problem with the pro14 is that every (most) games don't matter. To be honest over the past couple of seasons the only focus has been on the last couple of games in the season to try and get into the Champions Cup...

I can't be the only person who isn't over excited by the prospect of Blues v Zebre/ Southern Kings etc...

I can only think of ice hockey as a sport where all four UK nations have representative sides that play each other, so it shouldn't be an alien concept. I think the fact that too many games are disrupted through availability of internationals during autumn/WC and 6N really does undermine the integrity of the Pro14, not to mention some poor Reffing. The playing quality is no worse than the English Premiership or Top14.

You must be right that the casual fan is motivated in a different manner from the keen fan, so how can clubs get casual fans to be keen fans ?

I always find teams more interesting to watch if I know something about the players. I know about the players in 2 ways: being aware of them coming through the youth and A teams; seeing them interviewed - even for a few minutes.

I completely disagree that the Pro14 matches mean nothing until near the end of the season. The moment a team drops points early in the season, we say how important that will be, come the end of the season.

Also, every match is vital to most of the players playing in it - especially the ones who might not make the team for the European competition. You can see the massive effort the fringe players put in.

It would be so boring having the same squad of 23 players and injury replacements involved week in, week out - it's refreshing to see newbies pushing their case but the clubs need to publicize each player so they are not just alien names on the team sheet. There are always interesting back stories about newbies and nippers; tell the casual (and other) fans these stories and they will get sucked into the soap opera.

There are just the right number of derbies (in Wales and Ireland anyway) and the international element adds so much spice. Irish teams absolutely hate to lose to Welsh and Scottish teams etc. Up to now, teams have hated being beaten by the Italian teams because they weren't expected to lose and because they knew it meant losing ground to their rivals.

The fascination of watching your team playing weaker clubs is that those fixtures give the coaches of the stronger clubs the chance to filter in some up-and-coming players, and we expect them to do so but obviously there is the risk of overdoing that and surprises do happen.

The art of attracting casual fans is maybe to win enough of your home matches first - ease the nippers into the team in away matches, especially as there is less pressure on them making their debut in front of family and friends.

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